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Zinedine Zidane, arguably the most iconic French footballer of all time, has officially been named the next head coach of the French national team. His tenure begins September 1, 2026, after the conclusion of the FIFA World Cup. Zidane revealed he turned down multiple coaching offers over the past five years because he only ever wanted one job: Les Bleus.
The coaching hire itself
Zidane succeeds Didier Deschamps, who led France through two World Cup finals and one title. During two stints at Real Madrid, from 2016 to 2018 and again from 2019 to 2021, Zidane won three consecutive Champions League titles. He has no prior experience managing at the senior national level.
Zidane agreed to the role by March 2026, giving both sides months to plan the transition.
Where crypto fits, and where it doesn’t
France has no official fan token. The FFF has shown zero interest in the digital asset space, even as clubs within its own borders have gone all-in. Paris Saint-Germain launched its fan token through Socios and the Chiliz platform. Juventus did the same. FC Barcelona, Manchester City, and dozens of other European clubs have experimented with tokenized fan engagement.
An unofficial France Fan Token, ticker FRA, exists in the wild. A handful of meme tokens referencing Zidane himself have popped up. None of them showed meaningful market movement following the coaching announcement.
The FFF operates under French law, and France has been one of Europe’s more cautious jurisdictions when it comes to crypto promotion. Influencer marketing rules, advertising restrictions, and a general skepticism from regulators have made sports-crypto deals more complicated in France than in, say, Turkey or Portugal. The fan token market peaked alongside the broader crypto bull run in 2021, and many of those tokens have since lost significant value.
What investors should actually watch
Chiliz, which powers most of the major fan tokens, has been in a prolonged cool-down period along with the rest of the altcoin market. Crypto.com and Binance struck deals with FIFA, UFC, and Formula 1 during the last cycle.
Traders watching meme tokens or unofficial fan tokens tied to Zidane or France should exercise extreme caution. These assets lack official backing, tend to have thin liquidity, and are vulnerable to pump-and-dump dynamics around news events. The lack of any price reaction to the coaching announcement itself suggests the market has already priced in the irrelevance of these unofficial assets.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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